Life and Laughter in London

If I don’t go to London every few weeks it feels like something’s missing from my life, so this weekend I headed down there with tickets to see comedian Greg Davies at the iconic Hammersmith Apollo.

This time of year is pretty special – the German markets have appeared in the run up to Christmas, as have the ice rinks and general Christmas decorations.

One of the ice rinks is at Somerset House, and we (my friend Laura and me) were going to see a free Cartier-Bresson exhibition there. I’m a photography nut and couldn’t wait to go. It’s an exhibition about colour – Cartier-Bresson is famous for his black and white photos and it was a collection of his pictures alongside some well known colour photographers, my favourite being Joel Meyerowitz. I was lucky enough to sit in on Meyerowitz doing a talk in Derby a couple of years ago and it was really inspiring.

We stumbled into a fashion photography exhibition too, with a rather creepy doll standing at the entrance.

Somerset House is just across the river from one of my favourite areas of London – South Bank. As we were treating the weekend as a holiday we decided to go for a cheeky afternoon pint in interesting surroundings, so we chose the BFI (British Film Institute). It has a bar at the front but a more secret one inside with lots of random sofas and cushions that don’t match, and low atmospheric lighting.

It’s South Bank that holds one of the German Markets so we wandered around feeling all Christmassy and tasting lots of samples of things we never intended to buy – mainly cheese. Lots of cheese, and I mean good decent [English] cheddar. They also have Churros and pick’n’mix. In fact the German market isn’t really very German at all. I searched high and low for anyone wearing Lederhosen but no joy.

Our cheese starter had left us wanting more so we went to our favourite restaurant Ping Pong and stuffed our faces with all kinds of dumplings and pork buns and spring rolls, then rolled out and waddled onto the Tube to go to Hammersmith.

Greg Davies is a comedy giant, and I mean that in more of a literal sense – he’s 6ft8. He’s also very funny and his giantness makes him quite alluring in a weird way. I’m 5ft tall (or 5ft short I should say) and imagine he could crush me like a Twiglet.

His show was brilliant, it’s the second time I’ve seen him live in London (different shows) and he never fails to entertain. The night was young when it finished so we decided to take our cameras off to Soho to photograph London life.

The following day we ended our little weekend away with an amazing breakfast at The Breakfast Club in Angel. It’s an uber trendy all day breakfast place where people regularly wait for up to an hour to get in. This is why:

I can’t wait til the day when I move to London permanently, but the time in between now and then will be immense. That reminds me, I really should book the first flight of my RTW trip soon. It’s only 3 months away now!